Saturday, June 15
Jun. 16th, 2024 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
That I've been able to sleep right through the work being done on the house (the guys were back to work on the soffits/fascia with my Sweetie). It's not that loud, it's outside, but other times I have not been able to sleep if I hear people working.
Lovely weather.
A fairly laid back start to the day.
A good conversation with Sister E.
I let everyone out into their pastures, and mowed for a while. The grass is growing SO FAST right now.
I worked with Wonder and Dandy for short sessions each, and got good draw from both of them.
Then we worked on cutting down a once lovely choke cherry tree that got full of that knot fungus and is mostly dead. It's sort of a group of trunks rather than one large one, so we got about half of it all down. Then the trailer was full, so we'll have to take that to the dump before we can cut down more.
Then we came in and watched more "Justified".
Rwanda is a land locked African country, located in part of the Rift Valley. It is known as the "land of a thousand hills".
Rwanda was inhabited by various hunter gatherers, then the Bantu people moved in. There were several clans, then kingdoms and finally a large kingdom, the Kingdom of Rwanda emerged. "In the 15th century, one kingdom, under King Gihanga, managed to incorporate several of its close neighbor territories establishing the Kingdom of Rwanda. The Kingdom of Rwanda dominated from the mid-eighteenth century, with the Tutsi kings conquering others militarily, centralising power, and enacting unifying policies. In 1897, Germany colonized Rwanda as part of German East Africa, followed by Belgium, which took control in 1916 during World War I. Both European nations ruled through the Rwandan king and perpetuated a pro-Tutsi policy. The Hutu population revolted in 1959. They massacred numerous Tutsi and ultimately established an independent, Hutu-dominated republic in 1962 led by President Grégoire Kayibanda."
The conflicts between the Hutu and the Tutsi people has become an ongoing issue in Rwanda, leading to endless civil war and political coups with one side or the other trying to seize power. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 went on for one hundred days, was mostly a massacre of the Tutsi people with estimates of anywhere between half a million and a million deaths (not sure why there was such an unclear count of victims).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won that conflict and has been the single party that leads Rwanda since 1994. As you can imagine, there are issues with government transparency and things like banning other parties, assassinations, etc.
It's largest river is Nyabarongo, which eventually drains into Lake Voctoria (though Rwanda does not have coast line along that lake), and there are numerous lakes and other smaller rivers.
There are mountains and hills, the highest being in the volcanic Virunga chain (Virunga being where Dian Fossey famously worked to save the mountain gorillas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey).
It has a tropical climate, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year.
The economy struggles in the aftermath of so much conflict, and around 90% of the population is engaged in subsistence farming, with coffee being an exported product. Mining contributes a lot to the economy, and tourism is a potential growth area, especially as people want to see the gorillas and the areas of rainforest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda
https://youtu.be/_MbzQNFC2kA?si=D2kkVeZkNuRYvA2l
That I've been able to sleep right through the work being done on the house (the guys were back to work on the soffits/fascia with my Sweetie). It's not that loud, it's outside, but other times I have not been able to sleep if I hear people working.
Lovely weather.
A fairly laid back start to the day.
A good conversation with Sister E.
I let everyone out into their pastures, and mowed for a while. The grass is growing SO FAST right now.
I worked with Wonder and Dandy for short sessions each, and got good draw from both of them.
Then we worked on cutting down a once lovely choke cherry tree that got full of that knot fungus and is mostly dead. It's sort of a group of trunks rather than one large one, so we got about half of it all down. Then the trailer was full, so we'll have to take that to the dump before we can cut down more.
Then we came in and watched more "Justified".
Rwanda is a land locked African country, located in part of the Rift Valley. It is known as the "land of a thousand hills".
Rwanda was inhabited by various hunter gatherers, then the Bantu people moved in. There were several clans, then kingdoms and finally a large kingdom, the Kingdom of Rwanda emerged. "In the 15th century, one kingdom, under King Gihanga, managed to incorporate several of its close neighbor territories establishing the Kingdom of Rwanda. The Kingdom of Rwanda dominated from the mid-eighteenth century, with the Tutsi kings conquering others militarily, centralising power, and enacting unifying policies. In 1897, Germany colonized Rwanda as part of German East Africa, followed by Belgium, which took control in 1916 during World War I. Both European nations ruled through the Rwandan king and perpetuated a pro-Tutsi policy. The Hutu population revolted in 1959. They massacred numerous Tutsi and ultimately established an independent, Hutu-dominated republic in 1962 led by President Grégoire Kayibanda."
The conflicts between the Hutu and the Tutsi people has become an ongoing issue in Rwanda, leading to endless civil war and political coups with one side or the other trying to seize power. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 went on for one hundred days, was mostly a massacre of the Tutsi people with estimates of anywhere between half a million and a million deaths (not sure why there was such an unclear count of victims).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won that conflict and has been the single party that leads Rwanda since 1994. As you can imagine, there are issues with government transparency and things like banning other parties, assassinations, etc.
It's largest river is Nyabarongo, which eventually drains into Lake Voctoria (though Rwanda does not have coast line along that lake), and there are numerous lakes and other smaller rivers.
There are mountains and hills, the highest being in the volcanic Virunga chain (Virunga being where Dian Fossey famously worked to save the mountain gorillas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey).
It has a tropical climate, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year.
The economy struggles in the aftermath of so much conflict, and around 90% of the population is engaged in subsistence farming, with coffee being an exported product. Mining contributes a lot to the economy, and tourism is a potential growth area, especially as people want to see the gorillas and the areas of rainforest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda
https://youtu.be/_MbzQNFC2kA?si=D2kkVeZkNuRYvA2l
